Today's marketplace for storage containers for the home or office is crowded and thriving. It is difficult for merchants and manufacturers in today's market to distinguish their products from the vast array of choices available to the consumer. Adding the novelty of a striking optical illusion to the design of everyday containers adds a new aesthetic and amusement value to them. Especially common in the average household are containers for conveniently storing pens, pencils, scissors, toothbrushes, combs, tubes of toothpaste and ointments, straws, chopsticks, and other kitchen utensils. Places of business can benefit from novel ways of presenting pens and pencils, items for sale, or business cards. Adding an optical illusion to such household and business containers adds a welcome new dimension of enjoyment for the consumer, and adding such an optical illusion to the display of common consumables at the point of sale can give a marketing edge by attracting attention to their novel design.
Magicians have long used the principle of mounting mirrors inside boxes, both small and large in size, to hide small objects, parts of human anatomy such as an arm or a head, or even entire people and animals. The principle is very old and even patented for certain specific uses (see Adams, U.S. Pat. No. 4,023,794).
There is available on the market today a magician's apparatus called a “duck bucket” which utilizes a mirror configuration similar to that of my invention. (see: http://www.owenmagic.com/Livestock/Livestock_2/livestock_2.html) However this apparatus requires skilled presentation by a performer to produce an illusion effect, and does not permit the sensation of items visibly disappearing as they are inserted into the device. It is not a practical means for storing useful every-day objects. Furthermore, it does not employ the method of my invention of extending the mirror up into a non-symmetrical section of the container thereby precluding the likelihood that a mirror is employed in the illusion.
Advertisers have often employed optical illusions that use light reflective surfaces in their displays to attract customers (see William Albert Burns U.S. Pat. No. 1,680,855, A. Trippe-Furst U.S. Pat. No. 1,721,014 and A. G. Steen U.S. Pat. No. 1,740,842).
Manufacturers of toys, games and novelties have employed optical illusions that use light reflective surfaces to enhance the amusement value of their products (see U.S. Pat. No. 4,967,953 Shigeru Sugawara, Suzuki U.S. Pat. No. 5,494,217 and Boles U.S. Pat. No. 4,960,274).
U.S. Pat. No. 5,392,161 employs light reflective surfaces to create a “see through” effect utilizing the reflective principle of a periscope. This “see through” effect differs from the effect of an empty interior space, and it has the limitation that, like a periscope, its virtual images all rely upon multiple reflections in multiple mirrors.
None of these aforementioned devices employs mirrors or other light reflective surfaces as part of the design of a container for storing one or more objects while permitting their easy removal.
U.S. Pat. No. 8,336,720 is a storage rack that employs one or more mirrors to make items disappear. While this device does create the illusion that items stored in it disappear, it is limited to designs whose structures, in their entirety, exhibit one or more planes of symmetry. This storage rack device does not include various framework structures whose symmetry is restricted to only one portion of the structure, as my invention does. Restricting the symmetry of the container to only a portion thereof, and fixing the structure in an unusual orientation for viewing, allow for more counter-intuitive and surprising ways to introduce a mirror into the design. Furthermore, nothing in the prior art or currently for sale on the market employs the use of the optical illusion created with the novel arrangement of light reflective surfaces of my invention to enhance the novelty, amusement and aesthetic value of containers for the practical storage of one or more every-day items found in the typical household or place of business.